Feb 7, 2010

AFP

Archaeologists in China have uncovered more than 3,000 dinosaur footprints….. The footprints, believed to be more than 100 million years old,…… The prints range from 10 to 80 centimetres (four to 32 inches) in length,……… This indicated a possible migration or a panic escape by plant-eating dinosaurs after an attack by predators,

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(see also : misc_environment.html)

OCT 2007

The Boeing 747 jumbo jet generally carries about 400 passengers. The A380 — as tall as a seven-story building with each wing big enough to hold 70 cars — is capable of carrying 853 passengers in an all-economy class configuration.

However, Singapore Airlines opted for 471 seats in three classes — 12 Singapore Airlines Suites, 60 business class and 399 economy class.

Each suite, enclosed by sliding doors, is fitted with a leather upholstered seat, a table, a 23-inch flat screen TV, laptop connections and a range of office software. A separate bed folds up into the wall. Two of the suites can be joined to provide double beds, one of which the Elwoods occupied.

Dec2006

LONDON, England (Reuters) -- An ancient astronomical calculator made at the end of the 2nd century BC was amazingly accurate and more complex than any instrument for the next 1,000 years, scientists said on Wednesday.

Dec2006

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -- A single, gigantic asteroid slammed into Earth 65 million years ago, dooming the dinosaurs and many other species. Scientists believe that an asteroid about 6 miles wide hurtled to Earth 65.5 million years ago <> plunging into what is now Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula. The impact triggered a worldwide environmental catastrophe.The dinosaurs, which had ruled for 160 million years, were wiped out. So were large marine reptiles like the mosasaurs and the plesiosaurs, the flying reptiles known as pterosaurs <>. The birds suffered losses but survived. The mammals made it through as well, allowing these warm-blooded, furry little creatures to eventually dominate the land and ultimately setting the stage for the rise of human beings.

The world's most powerful supercomputer

June 23, 2005

A supercomputer only half-built has been christened as the world's most powerful computer.

Blue Gene/L, built by computer giant IBM has been named as the world's most powerful computer, after it reached a peak processing speed of 136.8 teraflops (trillion calculations per second), in testing.

Officials are of the opinion, that once complete, it will have a peak performance in excess of 360 teraflops, reports NewScientist.

Review of terminology
kilobyte 210 bytes = 1024 bytes. (Usually the prefix "kilo" means 1000, as in kilometer or kilowatt. Computer
memories, however, come in power-of-two sizes, so here the prefix "kilo" means 1024.)
megabyte 220 bytes = 1024 kilobytes = approximately 1 million bytes.
gigabyte 230 bytes = 1024 megabytes = approximately 1 billion bytes.
millisecond 10-3 seconds = 1/1000 of a second. (The prefix "milli" means 1/1000, as in millimeter or millilitre.)
microsecond 10-6 seconds = 1/1000 of a millisecond.
nanosecond 10-9 seconds = 1/1000 of a microsecond.

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250000 pounds of rock has to be processed to get one small diamond

By BRIAN MURPHY, Associated Press Writer

PERSEPOLIS, Iran - The archaeologist peered down upon the enemy through stone portals that have withstood 2,500 years of weather and warfare.

"See the factories? See the pollution?" said Hassan Rahsaz, who heads conservation efforts at Iran's best-known relic of ancient Persia. "This may be the biggest threat ever faced by Persepolis."

Industry and urban life are marching toward the graceful columns and tiered courtyards of Persepolis — Greek for "city of Persians" — like an invading desert army. Winds carry the menace from a few miles (kilometers) away: car exhaust, fumes from petrochemical plants, clouds that spill acid rain.

The thickening smog from Shiraz and its gritty factories and towns on its outskirts work like sandpaper on the porous stone, experts say. They fear the stunning details on its friezes and monuments could disappear in decades if the growth continues unchecked.

"This was once a center of ancient civilization. And now we are under siege by modern civilization," said Rahsaz, whose father was part of early excavations at the site 50 years ago.

Resting at the foot of craggy mountains 440 miles (708 kilometers) south of Tehran, Persepolis was an awe-inspiring center for ceremonies and worship during the Achaemenid dynasty — the first significant kingdom of ancient Persia.

                    US Workers Too Stressed to Take Vacation

                    NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Many Americans are involuntary
                    workaholics, results of a recent survey suggest. More than 30% of workers gobble their lunch while they work
                    and nearly 20% said they are too overworked to use their annual vacation time--even though they already have
                    fewer vacation days than workers in other industrialized nations.

                    ``Regular vacations are preventive medicine, they cut down on stress-related illness and save health care
                    dollars,'' Dr. Alan Muney, of Oxford Health Plans, said in a statement. Oxford Health Plans sponsored the
                    survey, which included phone interviews with 632 men and women selected at random. The results have a
                    margin of error plus or minus 4%.

                    Seventeen percent of the workers surveyed reported a loss of sleep because of work and 21% said they have
                    missed family events because of their job.

Friday September 22 1:46 PM ET
                    Computer monitors may be hazardous to health

                    By Alan Mozes

                    NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Your new computer monitor may offer
                    many advantages over your old model, but it may also have one feature that
                    could affect your health.

                    According to Swedish researchers, more than half of new computer monitor
                    displays currently being sold are treated with a flame-retardant chemical
                    known for provoking allergic reactions--and this compound emits from the
                    screen into the air surrounding the computer user when heated up as a result
                    of everyday usage.

                    NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - A surprising number of Americans report
                    high levels of stress, anxiety and sadness, according to new survey results.

                    Even though their symptoms don't meet the definition of clinical depression,
                    they can have a significant negative impact on quality of life, according to Dr.
                    Michael Seidman of the Henry Ford Hospital in Detroit, Michigan.

World's Fastest Computer Now Japanese, Report Says
                Sat Apr 20, 2002

                NEW YORK (Reuters) - A Japanese laboratory has built the world's
                fastest computer, one with the computing power of the 20 fastest U.S.
                computers combined, The New York Times reported on Saturday.

                The computer is nearly five times faster than the previous leader, a
                machine built by International Business Machines Corp. , according to
                Jack Dongarra, a University of Tennessee computer scientist who
                maintains an authoritative list of the world's fastest computers, the Times
                said.

                The Japanese government spent $350 million to $400 million to develop
                the supercomputer over the past five years, Akira Sekino, president and
                chief executive of HNSX Supercomputers, a unit of NEC Corp. of
                Littleton, Colorado, told the newspaper.

STOCKHOLM (AP) — Three U.S.-born scientists won the Nobel Prize in physics on Tuesday for overturning a fundamental assumption in their field by showing that the expansion of the universe is constantly accelerating.

Their discovery created a new portrait of the eventual fate of the universe: a place of super-low temperatures and black skies unbroken by the light of galaxies moving away from each other at incredible speed.

NEW YORK (Reuters) - IBM (IBM.N) Monday unveiled a $100 million plan to build the world's
fastest supercomputer, which would be used to understand how proteins fold, considered important
to understanding diseases and finding cures.

The ambitious plan envisions a new RS/6000 computer named ''Blue Gene,'' capable of more than
one quadrillion operations per second, or 1,000 times more powerful than the Deep Blue machine
that beat world chess champion Garry Kasparov in 1997.

Blue Gene will consist of more than one million processors, each capable of one billion operations
per second, IBM said. That would make it 2 million times more powerful than today's top personal
computers.

SUICIDE

 NEW YORK, Oct 15, 1999 (Reuters Health) -- Suicide rates are highest in areas with high levels
 of ``social fragmentation,'' that is, areas where there are large proportions of people who are
 single, live alone, rent where they live or move frequently, according to results of a new
 study.

 British researchers suggest that social fragmentation may be more important in determining
 suicide rates than other factors associated with suicide, such as unemployment, poverty, and
 living in overcrowded housing.

   TEHRAN, March 8, 2000 (AFP) - Iranians are being allowed to celebrate
an age-old fire festival, condemned by the clergy as irreligious,
for the first time since the Islamic revolution of 1979, the
government daily Ettelaat reported Wednesday.
   The only stipulations are that it should not disturb the
neighbours and that only authorised fireworks, produced by the
defence industries, be sold.
   The national bonfire night occurs this year on March 14, being
the Tuesday before the Iranian new year. Dating from the Zoroastrian
era, it is a festival of symbolic purification.
 

Modern humans date back nearly 195,000 years

By LEE BOWMAN
Scripps Howard News Service
Thursday, February 17, 2005 - Page A26

New dating analysis of Ethiopian rocks, found nearly 40 years ago holding the partial skulls of two modern humans, concludes that the remains are nearly 195,000 years old.

These findings, reported in today's edition of the journal Nature, roll back the debut of anatomically modern humans by as much as 50,000 years from previous estimates and raise new questions of just when the "sapiens" (thinking) part of Homo sapiens came into play.

When paleontologist Richard Leakey first found the fossilized bones in 1967 among rock formations beside Ethiopia's Omo River, they were thought to be 130,000 years old.

2005

"Investors should remember that excitement and expenses are their enemies," Buffett told shareholders. "And if they insist on trying to time their participation in equities, they should try to be fearful when others are greedy and greedy only when others are fearful."

Berkshire and Buffett have had great success when it comes to "being greedy only when others are fearful." But maintaining such a strategy can be very hard, said Michael Mauboussin, chief investment strategist at Legg Mason Capital Management in Baltimore, and an adjunct professor at the Columbia Graduate School of Business.

"That's very plain, common sense advice," Mauboussin said. "But it's a very difficult thing to do."

Part of the difficulty comes from the fact that most major financial institutions — and the financial media that cater to them — focus on short-term performance. For small investors, having the conviction to resist being part of that group can be a huge challenge. But research has shown that portfolios with lower turnover rates perform far better in the long run. Less trading means lower costs, but also requires a strong stomach.

"It ... runs counter to the American way. In most endeavors, the more active you are, the harder you work at it, the better you do. Activity is equated to success," Mauboussin said. "But in investing, it's really not. Most of the great investors make very few decisions. It's kind of counter to the way most people think and operate."

………..

Doing so doesn't necessarily mean never revisiting your position. Buffett is critical of himself for not selling more stocks in 1999 and 2000, when he was questioning market valuations. There's a lesson in that too, Neenan said.

"If you have the will power to just sit tight, you can do big things," he said. "But be wise enough to look back at your past decisions and evaluate how they perform. A lot of people tend to bury their losses and forget about them. But even this guy is always re-evaluating, he's always looking back and trying to learn."

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The name "Impressionism" was first given as a term of abuse, an insult hurled at Monet's painting "Impression;Sunrise" by a critic, after seeing it in an exhibition of works by this new group of artists in 1874. About 165 works were shown, the public nor the critics were impressed - many in fact came there to laugh! Some called the works, wallpaper. The most famous of these were Monet, Renoir, Sisley, Pissarro, and Morisot, with Manet as their mentor. Also Degas and Cassatt, and Cezanne were closely associated with them.

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More in U.S. Have Foreign-Born Mothers

By DAVID B. CARUSO, Associated Press Writer Thu Jul 7, 2005

NEW YORK - Nearly 23 percent of all people born in the U.S. in 2002 had a foreign-born mother — the largest percentage since a wave of immigration more than 90 years ago, a study of birth records by a private nonprofit group shows.